the fisherman who wants to justify himself with
the rod, there have been a spice of inquisitiveness, the wide open eye
of inquiry, the sense of something not quite familiar, in such days as
I have spent in a Thames punt. My acquaintance with barbel is also so
limited that it counts for little. In a well-known barbel hole of the
Kennet I fished in vain; once in April I caught a gravid specimen
spinning for trout in a Thames weir; while spinning for pike I have
hooked small barbel foul by the tail as they stood on their heads at
the bottom of a mill pool when the wheel was stopped. This
acquaintance, in fact, was intermittent and casual. But I bear in mind
one day of close intimacy with the strong, sporting barbel; and on this
March morning, when the windows are being bombarded with snow, hail,
and sleet, making it, I trust, bad for the Zeppelins, I intend to lose
myself in the impressions of that one instance of intimate terms with
the fish. It must have been in late autumn, for I seem to hear a sad
sobbing of wind from the elms, and a whispered dispersal of decayed
leaves, loosened by recent white frosts.

I remember, too, that the professional fisherman, Hawkins, was very
hopeful. He said his comrade, Jorkins, on the previous day, with two
patrons from town, had had fine sport amongst the barbel, although the
fish did not run particularly large, and he added that he had often
known before, in previous years, a sudden eruption of cold weather
sharpen the appetites of the fish and bring them on, as he termed it,
headlong, for a fortnight or three weeks.

After all, there is something pleasant and soothing to the middle-aged
and somewhat lazy man in sitting upon a Windsor chair in a punt, with
pleasant objects to look at on either bank, with a tranquilly flowing
stream between, and an occasional boat or barge moving up or down. The
Castle, the familiar church, and the customary house-tops, were
prominent features in the picture; and now and then the distant scream
of a railway whistle and rumble of a train came in to save us from
imagining that we were altogether in the country. Then, it is not
disagreeable to the lazy man to have a fisherman (especially when it is
a good handy man like Hawkins) fussing about, and handling the nasty
baits, and making himself generally useful, as the deft-handed and
willing professional so well knows how to do when afloat. All this, of
course, was very well for a while. We looke